Honduras a country of contrasts

It’s nice to be back in a place where you can flush toilet paper.

My son Luke and I spent the week of July 9-16 in Honduras as members of a short-term mission team from First Colony Church of Christ. Every year the church sends its graduating seniors on a trip to a ministry we support called Mission Lazarus. It’s located in a very rural, mountainous region of southeast Honduras near Nicaragua.

I mention the toilet paper because the wastewater treatment systems in Honduras are primitive and can only process human waste. Toilet paper clogs the system, so it must be disposed of in a trash can next to the toilet. As disgusting and uncivilized as that may seem by our American standards, it’s actually a minor inconvenience compared to many of the things Hondurans experience as part of everyday life.

The places where we worked and served throughout the week are very rural and very poor. One of our objectives was the installation of latrines at homes in areas that were unimaginably difficult to reach. I’ve never seen people so humbled and grateful to have an outhouse before. When you live in such circumstances, the ability to flush a toilet is a rare luxury, as is toilet paper.

Before going into more detail about the trip, let me give you some background. Honduras is a Central American country of stark contrasts. It is mostly mountain jungles with very rocky soil. Pine, palm and oak trees grow side by side with hundreds of other varieties creating a lush green landscape. What I’ve seen of the land is exotic beauty scarred by impoverished hovels carved into hillsides. In communities you will see reasonably modern structures intermingled with shacks of scrap wood, corrugated tin, and adobe.

Where we were, pathways that passed as roads were little more than what most of us would consider rugged hiking trails. Mission Lazarus has a small fleet of Toyota Hilux trucks that would just about put a mountain goat to shame by the way they were used on those roads.

Mission Lazarus is actually based in Tennessee but runs missions in Honduras and Haiti. The Honduran mission operates a refuge for abused, neglected and abandoned children. It’s a lot like an orphanage. They also operate schools and a training center where children who have completed their education (at the sixth grade) can learn valuable trades, such as sewing and leatherwork.

Santos, the pastor, oversees a small church on the compound and another church in nearby San Marcos de Colon. The mission also operates a small coffee plantation that is overseen by a woman, which is practically taboo in Honduras.

Mission Lazarus is also one of the best employers in the region. Staff and laborers are paid a significantly higher wage than their urban counterparts, but they work long, hard hours for what they receive. The time and labor they put in for the wages they earn may seem unfair by our standards, but it is more than fair by Honduran cultural norms. I’ve been told that for every person working there you can find 10 more waiting in line to have their job.

Learning that helped me better understand some of the issues surrounding the immigration influx at the U.S./Mexico border. Although the border issue is far too complex to delve into here, I now understand that many of these immigrants legitimately want to work. They are not here to mooch of the system and get “free stuff.” Jobs in Central America are hard to come by and many of these people have families they are trying to support. They are willing to work long hours of demanding physical labor because it is what they grew up with and expect and also because minimum wage in the United States is much more money than they could ever earn back home.

Getting back to the First Colony mission, there were 34 of us and we stayed at the Posada, which was a working “resort” with a restaurant and cabins. Everything was very rustic and open air. The food was fresh and very good. We were divided into three groups and rotated through work areas each day. My group made concrete bricks on our first work day, which was back-breaking work. The next day we conducted a vacation Bible school for children at the school in San Marcos and then did latrine installation that afternoon.

On the third day we worked on paving a road with concrete bricks. The portion of the road we were paving was steep and curved. It was really physically demanding, as we were constantly hauling wheelbarrows of dirt and sand up the hill, moving bricks around, and chiseling a trench in the rocky road to make the concrete curb.

On our final work day, we were again divided into groups. Some went to work making the concrete slabs for latrines, others did carpentry work at the refuge, and Luke and I were back on the road paving crew. By the end of these four days we were physically exhausted and very sore. The feeling of accomplishment and knowledge of the lasting impact we made on the Honduran people, however, made everything worth it.

The next day was Sunday and we participated in services at the church in San Marcos. It’s really beautiful to see the blending of cultures and languages in a church service. After church we were treated lunch and ice cream. We then returned to the Posada to rest and later to watch four baptisms. On Monday we did a tour of Mission Lazarus, which took us to their coffee plantation, schools, dental clinic and the refuge. After lunch we were bussed back to the Capitol of Tegucigalpa, where we stayed a night in a hotel before return to Houston the next day.

Each night we concluded with a devotional time of music and what basically amounted to a daily debriefing. I was impressed with the depth of spiritual understanding and cultural observation of the kids. It was incredible to see how much they matured in that week.

On a side note, this was a second trip to Honduras for Luke and I. Luke went with Sandy in 2013, and I went with a team from our former church in Colorado in 1999, right after Hurricane Mitch devastated the country. I was pleased to see how much things had improved in 20 years.

We’re due to go back in two years when Colton, our youngest child, graduates high school. Although I doubt the sewer systems will be upgraded by then, I am anxious to see how lives were changed by the things we accomplished there.

Memories of the moon shot

As a youngster just 17 days shy of my fourth birthday, there were many more things that captivated my interest than the news my mother kept watching on television.

I didn’t understand why she had to have the TV turned to the news all day. There were other shows I wanted to watch. More importantly, there were other toys I wanted to play with and two younger brothers, ages 2 and 1, to hang out with.

As the day faded to evening that Sunday, July 20, 1969, time must have frozen for everyone but us three overly-active little boys in Niwot, Colo. The significance of the day wouldn’t dawn on me until decades later but the memory, although a little fuzzy after 50 years, is the most indelible of my early childhood.

Even though the hour was late, Mom let me stay up. Dad worked the night shift doing maintenance at IBM, so he wasn’t home. I knew something special was about to happen on TV but since it wasn’t a cartoon or “Batman” I figured it had nothing to do with me.

I was playing down the hall when Mom called me to her in the living room.

“Come watch, men are about to walk on the moon!”

She sat me down in her lap, but I wasn’t interested in watching the news. It was boring. Besides, what was the big deal about the moon anyway?

“No, you don’t understand,” Mom said. “Men have never set foot on the moon before. This is the first time.”

That didn’t make any sense to me.

“You mean we went past the moon and didn’t stop there first?” I asked.

Perplexed, Mom asked what I meant.

“You know, the Enterprise with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. They’re way out there, way past the moon.”

“Oh, that’s ‘Star Trek,’ that’s not real; this is real,” she said.

“What do you mean it’s not real? They’re on TV just like this. They’re way out in outer space,” I said.

“Men have never been past the moon,” she said. “‘Star Trek’ is make-believe. It’s just a TV show. This is real and it’s happening now.”

I remember sitting in her lap while she tried her best to explain to me what was happening on TV as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin ventured out upon the moon. I recall being incredibly disappointed learning that “Star Trek” was only make-believe. Something told me I wasn’t going to like the news about “Batman” either, but I wasn’t about to bring that up now.

My next space-related memories are those of my mother again being glued to the TV and radio while the Apollo 13 drama played out nearly a year later. I remember being confused because at first the astronauts didn’t have enough air, and then they did. I couldn’t understand how we got enough air to them in outer space, but somehow we managed. I also didn’t understand why they were not going to go ahead and land on the moon now that they had enough air. It seemed stupid to go all that way and not land.

This fuzzy photo shows Joe Southern with Buzz 

Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, 

during an interview at the National Space 

Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., in 2004.

Fast-forward about 30 years and I’m a reporter working for my hometown newspaper, the Longmont (Colo.) Daily Times-Call. My friend Travis and I are huge space nuts and we took advantage of every opportunity to report on space-related stuff. That included making annual treks to Colorado Springs to cover the National Space Symposium. Twice we got to meet Buzz Aldrin there and one time he granted us a 90-minute interview. On that same occasion he was there to honor Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, who received the Gen. James E. Hill lifetime achievement award.

There were a lot of astronauts and industry notables there, including legendary flight director Gene Kranz. At one point I walked out into the courtyard to make a phone call and the three of them were there reminiscing. I tried to nonchalantly get close enough to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Later, before the ceremony began, I saw Kranz pacing nervously in the back of the room. He was there to introduce Lovell. I walked up to say hi and shake his hand. He asked me if I wanted him to sign anything. The only thing I had on me was my press credential, so I handed it to him and he signed it.

Since that time I’ve met and interviewed scores of astronauts. Aside from Aldrin, one of the most memorable came just a couple years ago at Space Center Houston when I interviewed Harrison “Jack” Schmidt in front of his Apollo 17 command module that is displayed there. I’ve also had the honor to befriend Apollo-Soyuz Test Project astronaut Vance Brand, who was born and raised in Longmont. I had a long talk with him while sitting on the base of the sign that bears his name at Longmont’s municipal airport.

I’d love to tell you more about that, but this is my memory of Apollo 11 and the first landing on the moon 50 years ago. To help mark the milestone I went back to Space Center Houston two weeks ago and did the tour of the restored Apollo Mission Control Center. It’s impressive and I encourage everyone with an interest to go see it. The detail and functionality are incredible! It looks just like it did 50 years ago when my in-laws worked there.

In the meantime, I hope that the goal of going back to the moon by 2024 comes true so that my children will have historic space travel memories that they can share some day with their children and grandchildren. And yes, they already know the truth about Batman.